3.1Variety
Film Critic [Freelance]
Festival reporting and critical analysis for Variety.
I co-authored an interview-driven feature for Variety on Andrei Epure’s debut film Don’t Let Me Die, published during the Locarno Film Festival. The piece explored Epure’s aesthetic approach, thematic preoccupations and his notion of “sabotaging realism,” weaving together production context, Romanian folklore and the film’s sensory strategies.

The writing combined industry relevance with critical nuance—balancing an accessible trade-press tone with deeper analysis of form, sound design and narrative structure. Coverage included research, directorial interview integration and contextual framing within Romanian cinema and the Filmmakers of the Present competition.



Selected Copy [Excerpt]
Sound has this really nice quality of igniting the imagination,” he explains, emphasizing its violent and primal qualities, “used in horror because it’s sensorially overwhelming.” While “Don’t Let Me Die” isn’t a conventional horror film, its sonic landscape suspends us in an eerily liminal environment: “I wanted to render the presence and absence of [Isabela] through sound.” In a Duchampian turn of phrase, Isabela and Maria take turns as “guest” and “host” in each other’s lives, the two roles consumed within the portmanteau of “ghost”. 

The key characters share in their alterity and summon the animalistic archetype of the stray, behaviorally and physiologically. Through long tracking shots, Epure frequently captures Maria roaming passageways, with purpose but never entirely at home in her surroundings. After six years working abroad, Isabela’s son Dan (Silviu Debu) returns home upon the news of her death; while interrogating the clerical mess with Maria, Dan confesses that he and his mother share a vestigial tail. 

Epure takes inspiration from the strigoi of Romanian folklore, a spectral creature neither living nor dead. Seeking a conscious departure from the contemporary cinematic traditions of his home country – cultivated by the likes of Cristi Puiu and Corneliu Porumboiu—he “questions realism and its artificiality through soft ruptures.” Whether it’s the absurdist language used in conversation between two physiotherapy patients, or tenants squabbling over plumbing repairs co-signed by “He-of-the-Great-Event,” these pockets of perception unveil this unusual world. “I wanted Maria to have this impression that something is happening, but she’s not part of it—everybody else is in some kind of an agreement or conspiracy.